The present invention relates generally to printing, and more particularly to a method for printing in normal and borderless printing modes.
Printers include, without limitation, computer printers, copiers, and facsimile machines. Some printers, such as inkjet printers, print by printing closely-spaced ink dots on a print medium such as paper. Conventional inkjet printers include those having a carrier with at least one printhead such as a color printhead, a mono printhead, or a photo printhead. Some inkjet printers are controlled by software in a host (e.g., user""s) computer, such software including a printing application (such as a word processor or a spreadsheet) for creating a print job, and including a printer driver for printing the print job with a particular make and model of printer.
Conventional inkjet printers have a normal printing mode (or modes) which leave a predetermined minimum unprintable top, bottom, left and right margin on the paper sheet. This allows faster printing and avoids overspray of ink at the edges of the sheet. However, portions of the image extending beyond such unprintable margins are not printed in the normal printing mode(s). Some conventional inkjet printers have a default normal printing mode (or modes) and also have a user-activated borderless printing mode (or modes) which leaves no unprintable margins from two perpendicular edges or from all four edges of the sheet. The borderless printing mode prints at a slower speed than the corresponding normal printing mode and usually enlarges the image so there are no unprintable margins. Typically, to activate the borderless printing mode, the user (after deciding to print a borderless page in a word processor and after clicking the File menu and selecting Print in the word processor) must click the Properties button on the Print dialog to open the printer driver, then must find and turn on the borderless printing mode option in the printer driver, and then must close the printer driver window before printing by selecting Print on the Print dialog. Autocropping algorithms are known for scanning applications residing in the host computer which do not save white spaces surrounding the image and which provide a scanned image to the printer driver for printing on the paper. Manual cropping is also known.
What is needed is an improved method for printing in normal and borderless printing modes.
A first method of the invention is for printing an image on a sheet of print medium and includes steps a) through c). Step a) includes determining the size of the image. Step b) includes automatically selecting a normal printing mode for printing the image on the sheet when the determined image size can fit within a maximum printable area of the sheet for the normal printing mode, wherein the maximum printable area leaves an unprintable margin from at least one edge of the sheet. Step c) includes automatically selecting a borderless printing mode for printing the image on the sheet when the determined image size cannot fit within the maximum printable area, wherein the borderless printing mode leaves no unprintable margin from the at-least-one edge of the sheet. Steps a) through c) are performed by at least one computer program.
A second method of the invention is for printing an image on a sheet of print medium and includes steps a) through d). Step a) includes determining the size of the image. Step b) includes automatically determining if the determined image size can fit within a maximum printable area of the sheet for a normal printing mode, wherein the maximum printable area is aligned with the sheet and leaves an unprintable margin from each edge of the sheet. Step c) includes automatically selecting the normal printing mode for printing the image on the sheet when the determined image size can fit within the maximum printable area. Step d) includes automatically selecting a borderless printing mode for printing the image on the sheet when the determined image size cannot fit within the maximum printable area, wherein the borderless printing mode leaves no unprintable margin from two perpendicular edges of the sheet. Steps a) through d) are performed by at least one computer program.
A third method of the invention is for printing an image on a sheet of print medium and includes steps a) and b). Step a) includes automatically selecting a normal printing mode for printing the image on the sheet when the image can fit within a maximum printable area of the sheet for the normal printing mode, wherein the maximum printable area leaves an unprintable margin from at least one edge of the sheet. Step b) includes automatically selecting a borderless printing mode for printing the image on the sheet when the image cannot fit within the maximum printable area, wherein the borderless printing mode leaves no unprintable margin from the at-least-one edge of the sheet. Steps a) and b) are performed by at least one computer program.
Several benefits and advantages are derived from one or more of the methods of the invention. By automatically selecting the borderless printing mode when, and only when, the image will not fit within the maximum printable area of the normal printing mode, borderless printing is provided to inexperienced users unfamiliar with the added steps to manually activate borderless printing and saves the experienced user from having to take such added steps.